Pony Express Posts: Belated Announcement

Well, I suppose there's no point continuing to wait for a substantial, creative manner of announcement to float down from the heavens on a golden harp-shaped hovercraft, now that it's been a couple months.

My procrastination has been holding up a backlog of what's been passing for content here the past couple years (since we bought the house), as a lot of what I've thought of saying the past 6 months or so was in some way tied to this news... news which I had been trying not to just throw out there unceremoniously, much in the way I'm about to do right now:

We had yet another baby last month.  

See? That's her right up there, as proof. The second coming of M-, hereby to be known as A-. So we've completed our set of two boys and two girls.*

Yes, that's right, according to most people's reactions, as well as a quick flip through a generation's worth of census data, we are now the modern equivalent of that 8-kid family** people used to marvel at during the Baby Boom and Generation X's heyday.

Do we feel more complete now, you wonder? Have we started getting a human amount of sleep yet? Have we worked out some kind of daily routine now that school has started for J- and the kids? Have we any hope of shaking off the influence of our hypnotizing alien captors soon? Take a glance at the posting history here and then pencil in your guesses before I stop by with the answer key as soon as I can.

In the meantime, with this official notice out here, I should be able to at least get back to posting more lists of tidbits and such a few times a month, with more promises of actual paragraphs and thoughts and time and craft someday, once again.

It's the thought that counts, right?

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* This means I'll have to update the banner again, so soon*** after the last time.

** All I can say is those people are lucky they were able to delude themselves into thinking that small children wedged tightly enough across the bench seat of a station wagon would provide their own restraint in case of a high-speed accident. Otherwise, the country would either be a fraction of its present size today, or it would have been swarmed throughout the '60s with extended vans, RVs, and "Parental Sanity trailers" featuring a half-dozen kids suspended along the walls with heavy-duty straps.

*** Obviously a relative term, given that some of the pictures were several years out of date when I replaced them a couple months ago...

Classic quotes, Vol. 46

It's been too long since my 9-year-old son D-, formerly the star of this blog (back when I actually wrote posts with beginnings, middles, and ends), had the spotlight around here. Thanks in part to my extreme lack of posts in the past several months, I'm able to devote a whole quote list to this kid*:

D- (losing patience about an hour into the new Superman movie): When's he going to start flying and punching buildings down and stuff?

D- (when my neighbor pointed out that he'd forgotten to bring his checkbook to an auction): No, it's okay-- my dad brought his.

D- (after some over-the-top violence in a Bugs Bunny cartoon): That's outrageous!!

D- (seeing a display of Jelly Belly dispensers at a store, with cash burning a hole in his pocket): They've got candy, I've got money-- let's get in business!

D- (muttering to himself after cutting his foot): Sweet mother of Holy Moses...

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* Who now seems to be firmly a pre-teen, and thus Not a Kid. Hard to believe he was a toddler when this thing started!

Classic quotes, Vol. 45

Sorry for the long delay in posting; I'm spinning off my axis out here lately! I do have a bunch of pieces of things to post (along with the usual pile of unwritten Actual Posts, my shame of the last few years...), so I'm backdating this post to May 30th from June 25th, because who knows, I might catch myself up a bit soon.*

Anyway, here's just a very small selection of the quotable material my 2-year-old son E- provides us on a daily basis:

E- (very seriously, and with a straight face, after falling down and being offered kisses from his big brother D-): Can 'oo kiss... my butt?

E- (confused, threatened, and nearly stumped by his 6YO sister M- calmly responding, "No, you're done," to him reflexively parroting something he's heard us say to satisfying effect): ...I'm NOT done.

E- (very frequently, always about 10 times in a row, even when nothing noteworthy has occurred): What just haaaaap-pened?

E- (walking downstairs with D-, sounding as contemplative as someone with only two years of memories can): D-, one time...? I pell down da 'tairs. I tumbled down da 'tairs!

E- (all while I chewed and swallowed one small bite): Tan I have a bar? Tan I have a bar? ...Tan I have a bar?? Tan I have a bar?

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* Don't count on it.

Things that amuse me, Vol. 17

Here are a few of the things that have been amusing me recently:

1. Almost every time* I log in to eBay lately (or when they send me a "tantalizing" daily e-mail trying to draw me back to their site), they suggest that I might be intensely interested in purchasing a scale model of Vin Diesel's head. No matter what I shop for. Do I have to break down and buy one just to make it go away? Is that their twisted strategy to move odd products after being listed for too long?

2. Only when your 6-year-old girl stays home from school do you get to find out exactly how lovely your 2-year-old son's head looks filled with many sparkly hair clips.

(Despite the look on his face in this picture, he couldn't be happier about the attention, or the accessorizing.)

3. I am astounded by the logic of a PR rep (for something I still haven't paid attention to, on principle**) who decided that I, like everyone else who received her e-mail, likely did not pay the proper amount of attention to it, so she forwarded it to everyone all over again within the span of a week.

Now, of course, such an annoying action is far from uncommon, and it results in many, many e-mails coming in to bloggers' inboxes every day, but where this lady goes beyond the call of duty is by including this explicit and cringe-inducing opening sentence in her followup: "I know you must get a million emails like this daily, so I wanted to resend and ensure you received the info below."

...Make that a million and one.

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* The rest of the time, it suggests an equally creepy "Jason Statham" head.

** See that? You got your wish, lady-- I'm writing about your e-mail!

A lion in autumn

An e-mail I recently received from Buy.com asked the deceptively simple question, "What will you be this Halloween?"

That quandary was immediately and permanently addressed within the body of that very e-mail, in the form of a timeless treasure buried beneath a pile of boring, foolish, or even mildly ridiculous costumes: "A Sexy Wizard of Oz Cowardly Lion!"

Just in case one did not immediately grasp the magic inherent in those words, they included a siren song for the eyes:

Seems astonishingly obvious once you hear it and see it laid out like this, doesn't it? I mean, right here you have the very heart* of the film if not of the original book series itself! The whole narrative, this fictional universe, it all begins to collapse without the hefty weight of the Cowardly Lion's sex appeal anchoring it all --unspoken, undescribed, unobserved... possibly nonexistent-- and yet I'll bet you never once thought of it before now. Genius. Just genius.

Now, granted, the "sexiness" of this particular creation is highly dependent on the nature of the clay used to craft it, but I'm pretty confident I have the body to pull it off. The only real stumbling block to my undisputed ownership of this and all future Halloweens is the fact that it's currently on sale for $77.

I may have to let some pretender claim my throne, for that price. Or else, hmmmm... what would one of those craft bloggers do?

I'm off to find where I left my tan Spanx bodysuit and faux-fur boots 'n' muff!

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* Tin Woodman be damned. Again.

Product review: Waxelene

Sincerity Alert: The following is an ever-rare, completely sincere post, inspired by my very positive experience with a new product I was lucky enough to sample for free (my only compensation).

I've been offered at least a thousand products for review in the last few years, most of them either not something I'd ever be interested in, or not something YOU'D ever be interested in.

But, thankfully for me, I dutifully open and read at least the first line of each offer, and because of this, I discovered a product called Waxelene, which does everything petroleum jelly does without being made from oil.

It was always kind of a mystery to me how products like Vaseline went from black sludge in the ground to that familiar colorless, odorless, impenetrable paste, despite my repeated review of the Wikipedia article on the subject.

But its origins seem clear whenever I get the stuff somewhere I don't want it, not the least of which is the tips of my fingers. I guess I'm funny like that, but I just can't stand that feeling of having sticky or greasy stuff on my fingers that I can't get off.

After using it for several months, and sharing it with my family and my wife's co-workers, it seems that Waxelene solves that problem. While it effectively seals your skin as you'd expect, it does so without feeling oily, so I don't have to get creative in trying to apply it without losing the ability to touch anything for an hour or two. On top of all the performance benefits, it's made from (among other things) beeswax*, so it smells a bit like honey when first applied.

I've heard it's also good for removing makeup, but obviously I have no idea on that score, and since my wife isn't big on most makeup, I haven't seen it in action there yet. Another important area where Waxelene definitely gets bonus points from me is that it's an all-natural and organic product, which even comes in a glass jar with a metal lid, instead of plastic.

Overall, my review would be 5 out of 5 stars-- I love it, my wife loves it, my kids love it,** and I haven't heard any complaints or criticism from anyone else so far, several months along.

Just like Vaseline, a jar of this stuff goes a long way,*** but with all the uses we've found for the samples I was sent, I'm sure we'll be looking for it in stores a lot sooner than I would have thought. It's currently available at Whole Foods, along with many other non-chain stores, as well as through the Waxelene Web site.


Editor's Note: If you've read this far, dutifully waiting for a joke, I hate to disappoint you. If you'd like, you can always pass the time re-reading my less sincere Book Reviews that seem so popular to Google searchers.

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* Don't worry, it isn't any of yours.

 ** They really do-- they now ask for it by name, most of all when they're lying in bed trying to think of a reason not to lay still and go to sleep, and they suddenly realize they have dry skin somewhere that needs urgent attention.

*** Our current Vaseline was bought during my college class in Ireland, spring 2003...

When Google Translator joins the dark side...

From within the surging stream of spam comments flowing across this blog every day, I've landed a couple gems that I have to at least admire for entertaining me a bit before I tossed them back.

The real miracle about this first web of incorrectly selected synonyms is that it's eventually understandable at all:

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Record Taskmaster in a enter office told to a woman,”You possess to take another stamp on this correspondence literature as it is too heavy.

The woman replied, “How would an extra character get it lighter.”

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Your reward for parsing through all this is to arrive at a mild but satisfied chuckle, along with the opportunity to award the high praise of, "Oh, heh, I get it."

But that one's got nothing on this completely inexplicable paraphrasing of a Pink Panther scene my parents have always loved:

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(This is guaranteed laughs in the Chinese classroom. It was originally a bit in a Pink Panther movie).

A servant walks into a department store and sees a beautiful itty-bitty dog. He asks the shopkeeper, "Does your dog bite?"
The shopkeeper says, "No, my dog does not bite."
The man tries to darling the dog and the dog bites him.
"Ouch!" He says, "I thought you said your dog does not snack!"
The shopkeeper replies, "That is not my dog!"

Submitted by Rick Bell

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I'm intrigued by this spammer's acknowledging his/her national origin, impressed by his/her including an attribution for the joke, and just confused by the last line.

I have to say, bizarre spam comments like these are at least a breath of fresh air compared to the good old-fashioned densely packed page o' links, the strings of nonsensical symbols standing in for characters in various Asian fonts I don't have installed, and generic false praise leading to dating site pitches.

The ones that really have me suspicious are the ones that don't seem to include any links at all, or possibly just a link to my own blog, which only say something like, "Wow your this interesting article post keep it up I'm very informed from this topic it help me a lot on my college university paper project."

I was very tempted to let these two stand, as tribute to the spammers' attempts to offer something different in trade for my letting them use some comment space for free Viagra advertising, but in the end common sense prevailed.

They'll have to console themselves with this special highlight post, which is also guaranteed laughs in the Chinese classroom.

Amusing searches, Vol. 7

Here are more of the most amusing searches that brought people here recently, this time with the very simple theme of "complaining about your children." This could really be the first of several in a healthy sub-series of posts.

Note: All search strings are reprinted exactly as they were entered, and in this case, all searchers arrived at my 10 reasons my 3-year-old son may be homosexual post, which is apparently the only post on the Internet whose title features a child identified by a hyphenated label including his age. Or else it's just the strongest and most fascinating.

• why does my 5 yr son old piss around the house (Bloomington, IL) - 1) Because it's easier; 2) because he can; and 3) because he owns the property but isn't responsible for cleaning it. Also, I'd bet he somehow understands he won't be able to get away with it for long, so he's living it up while he can. Ahhh, to be that young again, never in search of the nearest bathroom...

• 3 year olds hands do the same thing (Davenport, FL) - This is a very slippery slope. "Same thing" meaning what? Picking his nose? Playing with his food? Poking his sister? Playing with himself? Stabbing at his dad's eyes whenever he looks away from him? Based on my thankfully fuzzy recollections of that age, you have to be much more specific.

• 9-year-old son lazy barefoot (Sandusky, OH) - Are you looking for a role model for the boy? If so, just let me know, and I'll try to see about getting around to offering him some pearls of wisdom. Better yet, just send him out my way, and he can lay at my bare feet just watching the master at work. Well, maybe "work" is too strong a word.

• my 3 year old son always has to be first - Correction: Your 3-year-old son always WANTS to be first. My 3-year-old daughter is the one who actually must be first. I do not recommend denying her this, or at least not without adequate protection.

• 10 yr old son likes to be naked (Surprise, AZ) - Who doesn't? Especially out there in the deserts of Surprise, Arizona. (Yes, that's really the name.) Let me warn you, though, if you say too much to him about it, you'll find him naked 24 hours a day for the next ten years, powered solely by spite. And nobody likes to see an angry naked guy. So do us all a favor and lay off, lady.

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A nice deal for those with babies: 10% off essential items like diapers, wipes and formula at Amazon

Amusing searches, Vol. 5

Here are more of the most amusing searches that brought people here recently, this time with the very simple theme of Vaginas.

I think it would thus be appropriate to dedicate this, lucky number 5 in this series, to BHJ.

(All search strings are reprinted exactly as they were entered.)

• orangutan vagina - Finally, one of my horde of orangutan-based searchers (living in one of my favorite places to say: Puyallup, Washington) comes out of the closet, in the middle of the night, probably after a few beers. If they hoped, in this Google Image search, to find a clinical image of a primate's vagina, or something a bit more... wild, I can only try not to imagine.

• what does an orangutans vagina look like - What do you think it looks like, Mr. Scarborough, Ontario? And why do you need to know? This is getting to be an epidemic! I've decided all people who live in or near the Canadian border are disgusting perverts. You may think this is rash, but I think the facts speak for themselves.

• chimpanzee vagina (Mountain View, CA and Mogi-guaçu, Brazil) - Look, I don't know who you've been talking to, but I obviously only deal in orangutans. What kind of low-grade vagina dealer do you take me for??

(And Mr. Brazil, you can be sure there isn't a stylist in the world who'd charge less than a month's salary to do a "Brazilian" for your new ladyfriend. Just imagine those wax strips! Shudder.)

• someone else's urine touched my vagina, (Potomac, MD) - Is this you again?? Did you move from Regina (hey, that rhymes with your search!) to Maryland? Hmmmm... probably unlikely.

Ladies,* is it really so hard to just flush first? Especially if you're so paranoid that you'll run directly from the splash-producing toilet to the always-open arms of The Internet to find out how many days you have to live, via a search string taking the form of the opening line to a country song I never want to hear?

• is it cleaner to lick a vagina or a toilet seat? (The United Kingdom) - I'm sure the ladies in the audience are deeply offended. The things those proper British gentlemen will ask The Google compared to what they discuss over high tea! But more practically, if the answer WAS a toilet seat, does that mean he'd be honor-bound to go around pleasing toilets all over town? Sorry, "loos" all over town?

• ocd about getting pregnant by a toliet seat - Oh, great, thanks... now I have something new to fear.

• what is origin of golden showers - I believe the answer is, technically, the urethra.

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* I hope I'm not going too far out on a limb here with this gender assumption.

Reports of my death are only mildly exaggerated

Editor's Note: Please humor me by imagining this post being grunted over my shoulder as I slaughter mice by the thousands, sword and shield in hand.

Editor's Note: And a gun... a really big, cool gun.

Now that I've gotten my Internet service up and running, I felt honor-bound to offer you all some kind of post as a reward for waiting patiently this whole week. By the computer, quietly whimpering all along, no doubt.

As a bonus for me, your standards are probably set really low by now, much like a food critic on the brink of starvation. I've always excelled at soaring over low standards as easily as I take the high-standard bar right in the teeth.

But speaking of teeth, as I listen to our new house settle and make all those noises houses do, I recline with bated breath, like the world's laziest hunter, waiting to see if we can all (theoretically) feast on roast mouseflesh tomorrow at breakfast. Otherwise, it's back to good old ladybugs and houseflies. By the handful.

The story of my short time in this (wonderful, amazing, joyous, I swear) house has been undeniably written in blood, though thankfully not much of it has been human.

If I were to make a size-relative hash mark for every life I've taken in the past six days, I could have re-created Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte twice, or, more likely, covered several walls with thousands of tiny scratches forming no discernible pattern. Either way, I'm pretty sure I'd be in trouble once my wife saw it.

But what my wife would like less would be the sight of me getting ready for breakfast by dabbing at blood stains on the old carpet someone saw fit to put in the kitchen while yelling at our 2-year-old that I meant it when I said to stay upstairs for just one more lousy minute.*

For you see, since my wife already had quite a long commute from our old apartment, and our "new" 120-year-old house is 2 hours farther away, she'll continue staying at my parents' house most of the time during the week, probably through the rest of the school year.

Our 5-year-old son D- is there with her as he continues at his old kindergarten until Christmas break, and thankfully after getting to play in his new bedroom for awhile on move-in day, he's eager for the school transition instead of dreading it.

And he's making the most of the opportunity to start over fresh, it seems, by not only torching every bridge a 5-year-old could possibly have built, but first desecrating them and then laughing while they burn.

So you can see why I've been even scarcer than recent months around here. I do appreciate the Amazon click-throughs some of you seem to have made after my previous post, and also the comments on my handful of recent status updates on Facebook. It's nice to not be totally abandoned even when I've abandoned everyone else for the time being!

I'll try to cobble together some list posts and other fragments that don't require as much consecutive minutes of focus, to get back in the swing of posting on here.

In the meantime, keep an eye on my Facebook status to make sure I haven't joined the fried mouse corpses in a fuse box somewhere in our dank old basement. ...Which I love, somewhere deep down. Deeper than the source of water that bubbles up through the floor now and then.

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* In case you somehow missed her repeated announcements to the world at large, she will SAVE the mice. All the mice!**

** That was before I explained to her in greater detail this evening about the bathroom habits, or lack thereof, of housebound rodents. Now she "hates all the mice", and presumably thirsts for their life force.

Working undercover as a scatterbrain

If you've been wondering for the past few months why I haven't been stopping by your blog anymore, fearing it was a devastating social rejection by the coolest person you know,* worry not. It wasn't, and what's more, you're not alone.

Yes, the now-two-and-a-half-month process of trying to buy a house out in the country has been sucking up my time as hard as... the now-two-and-a-half-month process of trying to buy a house out in the country.

To clarify, when I say "a house", I don't mean, "any house", I mean one specific house, for which we officially signed a contract over two months ago.

My life has been a long, tortuous series of ups and downs, brokers and insurers, negotiations and extensions, approvals and denials, and disclosures and contingencies. Did I forget to mention forced humility?

Yes, I sympathize with my invisible sisters, the stay-at-home moms sitting on the sidelines while The Wage Earners sign paperwork to buy themselves cool stuff like cars and houses, which they'll share with us only at their pleasure. Or, at least, that's how the lenders would have us all see it.

Doesn't rescuing many thousands of dollars a year of my wife's salary count as my income, for all intents and purposes? Or how about my dozens of dollars a month in blog-related revenue? Maybe I'll just let my friend Mr. Washington negotiate with these people for me, to smooth my path back to legitimacy in the eyes of society.

Hey, let me tell you, I can always spare a couple of ad clicks (a.k.a. a week's salary) for such a noble, self-interested cause.

Anyway, I offer this page as proof of my blogging-slacking-off claims. For my (surely) dozen or so stalkers out there: you're welcome.

And for the rest of you, please accept my awkward apologies, aw-shucks expression, and pathetic groveling for forgiveness. If, in the recent past or in the coming days, I don't seem to acknowledge some major change in your life, it's just because I probably didn't read or hear about it yet, but rest assured I feel far more guilty for that than you or your devoutly Catholic grandmother could ever try to make me.

Just fill me in on what I might have missed!

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* I mean me. You don't perceive it by any normal human senses or your logic-processing faculties, but I am in fact extremely cool. Kind of like discovering that light is a series of particles that move in waves, you have to totally adjust your perspective to see a brand-new, mind-bending reality. See how cool I am already?

That was my trick, now here's the treat

Well, as I'm sure you noticed, this past week was a bust for posting-- Blogger was all messed up.

Did I say Blogger? I meant The blogger.

So, to try to make it up to you, I'll post some hypnotic pictures of the kids today, and some thoughts I'd wanted to include in a pre-Halloween post Wednesday. We can all pretend I'm really organized and planned it this way from the beginning.

See the children, love the children, forgive their father.... and then give him all your candyyyyy...

...This scam's working so well, I'm gonna pull my patented Overreach Maneuver:

Weren't my posts last week the most hilarious ever?

They were so good I took them down, printed and bound them, and now I'm waiting for the Library of Congress to beg me to submit them.

That's why you don't see any posts dated during the past week.

And incidentally, these aren't the droids you're looking for.



They are, however, Peter Pan and, for the second straight year, Tinkerbell. I'll point to my creation of the Peter Pan costume from scratch as one reason for my rumored inability to post last week (which as we established is false), even though I bought the supplies Thursday afternoon and cut/sewed/etc. it all Thursday night so he could wear it to school on Friday.*

Because that's how stupid I am. Or awesome, depending on how you feel about legendary procrastination.

By the way, before you think I'm one of those parents who seeks to turn the world into my own little puppet show, no, I did not coordinate the kids' costumes. D- was a pirate two years ago and in remembering that, he made the jump to Peter Pan for this year, while M-'s imagination was just limited to the idea of being Tinkerbell because that's all she can remember (from last year) when she thinks of Halloween. And she's very stubborn, so she just put last year's costume on for one last run.

Next year I hope she easily accepts the fact that the costume will be too small, and she'll agree to be something else. Like the Incredible Hulk. One day, please God, one day, I want to see her in an Incredible Hulk costume, because I don't think I can imagine a more fitting one.

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* Sunday through Wednesday, I was visualizing and planning the costume 24 hours a day. Yeah, that's the ticket...

No laughing matter

As you may have read elsewhere, today is Cure JM day here in blog-land, an effort to raise awareness of juvenile myositis, a potentially fatal and always devastating group of autoimmune diseases affecting children.

This event was pulled together by my fellow blogger and friend Kevin, aka Always Home and Uncool, whose 9-year-old daughter has been living with this disease since before she was diagnosed 7 years ago today, which is also his wife's birthday.

You can hear more about Kevin's ultimately uplifting story at his (normally hilarious) blog, Always Home and Uncool, and also at the group blog we write for, Hot Dads. In short, he and his wife have chosen to take their daughter's lifelong illness and turn it into a positive for other families suffering with it, families who might not be as lucky in obtaining the necessary medical care to make life as comfortable as possible for their children.

His wife got this news as a birthday present 7 years ago, and today, though she may be the chair of the Cure JM foundation, she's being ordered to take the day off while the rest of us take up the cause. Happy Birthday!

To make a tax-deductible donation toward JM research, go to Kevin's FirstGiving page, or to the Cure JM donations page. And again, to read more, go to Cure JM or Always Home and Uncool.

Confirmation of Blogger-Authors' greatness

As I promised a month ago, I'm here to offer my thoughts on (Dad Gone Mad) Danny Evans' first book, Rage Against the Meshugenah, and (Baby on Bored) Stefanie Wilder-Taylor's latest book, It’s Not Me, It’s You, after reading them both in the past few weeks.

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RAGE AGAINST THE MESHUGENAH: Why it Takes Balls to Go Nuts

I wholeheartedly agree with every other reader I've heard from that this book is a must-read for anyone who knows someone (especially a man, or a generally reserved woman) who might be depressed.

This includes, of course, pretty much everyone, and I can't decide who would get more out of it-- people who know they know someone who's depressed, or people who haven't yet put all the signs together.

The tone of the book is not all dark and depressing, which would kind of defeat the purpose, nor is it all wisecracking superficiality. It's the same blend of both aspects (and others) that you get in the most rewarding, memorable conversations you have with good friends.

I know I'm not saying anything everyone who's listening hasn't already heard before, but I felt compelled (as someone who has faced a lot of the same struggles as Danny) to build on my preview post to confirm that yes, you really, really should read this book, one way or another.

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IT’S NOT ME, IT’S YOU: Subjective Recollections from a Terminally Optimistic, Chronically Sarcastic and Occasionally Inebriated Woman

As much as I enjoyed Stefanie's first two books, Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay and Naptime Is the New Happy Hour, I appreciated those on a much more superficial level, as a parent laughing at how ridiculous children and their parents can be sometimes.

Stefanie's new book is different, in that it's a straightforward, self-assured comic memoir, which is a genre (led by David Sedaris) that I particularly enjoy.

To keep you invested in her biography without getting caught up in a weepy tell-all, Stefanie sprinkles in just the right amount of references to the deeper drama and conflicts in her life that led to the amusing and occasionally bizarre stories that are the star of this book.

The result is a fast-reading collection of essays that can be taken all together in order, or separately and at random, without missing information that would keep you from appreciating her humor or storytelling abilities. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes humorous memoirs or personal essays.

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In unrelated news (about which I'm sure you'll see, hear, and read a great many more stirring tributes and remembrances than I can muster), today is of course the 8th anniversary of the hijackings of 9/11/01, for which I'm almost totally sure you can hold these two folks entirely blameless. How's that for an endorsement??

Amusing searches, Vol. 2

Here are more of the most amusing searches that brought people here recently, this time a batch of private-part related questions and statements.

(All search strings are reprinted exactly as they were entered.)

• attack of the one eyed monster - Please allow me to disillusion you... I think "attack" is really an unfair world. He's usually very friendly, though perhaps occasionally a bit overeager.

• I went pee in toilet and someone else's urine touched my vagina - From, wait for it... Regina*, Saskatchewan.

• can you get an STD from someone else's urine splashing onto your vagina - This was the very next day after the last one, from the same person, and seeing that made me wish I could somehow scream across the Internet, "No, you fool!"

• vaginal wash chimpanzee what is a experiment - I have no idea what would prompt this search, nor what I'd have to offer on this front, but suddenly I have an urge to check up on whoever is in charge of washing our nation's strategic supply of chimpanzee vaginas.

• orangutan ass picture - Only the finest quality product do I offer to you, dear readers. And now we've added yet another satisfied customer from Wroclaw, Poland.**

• "he's too pretty for his own good" - I'm impressed that my reputation has stretched as far as Kiel, Germany, but I'm not entirely surprised.

Sure, you might say, this one doesn't really involve private parts, per se, but I've included it here because whenever you think about how pretty I am, honestly, don't yours just get a nice, warm tingle?

• i keep catching my 4 year old son plays with his penis - This is one of those searches that clearly telegraphs the gender of the searcher.

And my question for her is as follows: Is your problem that you keep catching him doing it? 'Cause if you're looking for him to stop entirely, you've got a long line to get behind, and that line starts with the females of something even simpler than a squirrel monkey.

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* Pronounced, of course, "Reh-JI-na".

** I get searches for orangutan pictures every single day, and sometimes as many as 5 in one day, just because of that one post months ago. Who knew??

Guest Post: Tough love to start the year

No, my wife J-'s not getting drunk on attention after her debut guest post last week, but while I recover from this crazy topsy-turvy week, I figured I'd post something she wrote for her own first day of school this year*, her third as a middle school Special Education teacher:

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Dear Self,

You've been having a great summer. You have accomplished some of the things you wanted to, but overall, you have been lazy, forgetful, and self-indulgent. You have been eating on no particular schedule, you have been recklessly using the bathroom whenever you want to, you have been napping at all times of the day, and worst of all, you have been going to bed at crazy hours, well past your 9 o'clock bedtime.

You're in for a rude awakening in a day or two, and you're going to get your ass kicked by the clock. Please, straighten out your act or I will be forced to do something drastic about this situation. These measures will include things like dragging your butt out of bed to work out before leaving for work at 6am, or depriving you of your soul-saving caffeine. So shape up or prepare to be shipped out.

Also, you have been doing things in preparation to organize your stupid behind, and I swear this time you must follow through with it! This year you must stop staring off into space while mold slowly over takes your desk. You need to remember that if you leave your lunch out all day, it will no longer be something you should eat. You should, however, remember to bring it home before too long after that happens.

Also, please stop losing important paperwork and putting it off until the last minute: this is your year to shine.

Don't embarrass yourself in front of your new Para[professional]: she's old enough to be your mother, instead of your little sister like the last two years. You can do better. I'm expecting to be impressed!

Love you,
Me


P.S. Okay, okay, I won't really take away your caffeine, but I will use it to torment you if you aren't careful, Missy!

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* Editor's Note: Her first day was actually this past Wednesday, but clearly this was written on Monday.

Spreading the joy

Hey there, Friday readers! I feel like I should fill these posts with little Easter eggs of special meaning that all those losers out living life today would never see (because they’re too lame to understand they can look back out over this whole year-and-a-half of posts any time they want to), but I’m way too lazy and disorganized for that.

What’s more, I don’t even really have any UNspecial meaning for you, so for that and so much more I apologize in advance, and retroactively.

I just wanted to take a moment to recognize that two fellow bloggers out there have brand new works that just hit the shelves of your local bookstores, in one case his first book and in another her first book about herself. You should check them out. I know I can’t wait to.

Don’t have the spendin’ money to go buying books sight unseen? Hit the library first!

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RAGE AGAINST THE MESHUGENAH: Why it Takes Balls to Go Nuts

As some of you may already know, Danny Evans, who writes at Dad Gone Mad, spent more than one agonizing year reliving his moments of deepest depression to provide us all with some insight into the generally taboo phenomenon of acknowledging depression as a man.

The very concept itself involves admitting having feelings and then exploring them, so we can all at least understand where the trouble might start. Besides all that, because it’s written by Danny, the book is guaranteed to be funny, too, even (or especially) when it might normally seem inappropriate to be so.

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IT’S NOT ME, IT’S YOU: Subjective Recollections from a Terminally Optimistic, Chronically Sarcastic and Occasionally Inebriated Woman

Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, of Baby on Bored, already has two bestselling books out there, Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay and Naptime Is the New Happy Hour (and I suggest you read both), but this time she's focusing more on her own life story than on her adjustment to parenthood.

This lady found time to write another book while parenting infant twins and a toddler, so you know she's got her act together, and based on how funny her previous books and blog are, I'm thinking this one will be even better.

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Look for some form of tiny review, at least, for these two books sometime in the next few weeks.

BlogHer notes from an outsider

Since I'm still seeing other people's BlogHer recaps popping up every day, I don't feel so bad about procrastinating this long. For those who don't care, this is one and done.

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It probably says a lot about me, especially during my current phase of life, that when a convention comes to town that has HER in the title, I just can't wait to hop on the train and head downtown.

But when you blog about your kids as much as I do, you tend to read and be read by bloggers who also write about their kids. The world being what it is, that means I hang with chicks most the time. Online, anyway.

But BlogHer coming here to Chicago meant that I had the rare opportunity to meet a lot of these people in person, which was at once exciting and terrifying. If I was the kind of person to throw myself into social situations with people I don't know very well, then I probably wouldn't sit by myself writing on the internet so much. I'd probably be running some company that made popular things for popular people. And I'd have a lot more money. And I'd sit on my ergonomic toilet seat staring at magazines with my own face (and abs) on the cover, wondering if I'd ever stop shitting solid gold bricks.*

But whether that's a more desirable life than mine or not is neither here nor there. The fact is, I spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday a couple weeks ago showing up with my wife at the Chicago Sheraton without conference passes, and without knowing what venues would be available for us to meet people without accosting them at cabstands and bathroom sinks.

And you know what? It was awesome.

Except for that pesky day in the middle on which I actually wondered if I might die on the bathroom floor at a fancy hotel, just like a life-conquering celebrity but without the drugs or success.

So if you saw me on Friday and wondered why I looked so surly and distant (sorry Neil and Suzanne), it's only because I was intently trying not to vomit and/or internally debating the best position in which to lie in case I got a choice moments before death's icy finger tagged my soul out to send some fresh meat into the Diarrhea Olympics.

Before all that, though, I got to spend some quality time with Middle-Aged Woman (Unmitigated) and Muskrat, meet Black Hockey Jesus and Tanis (Redneck Mommy), and then wonder how the hell I was going to find anyone else in the mass of humanity who wasn't introduced to me by someone else. Heck, we spent well over an hour at the SociaLuxe party playing with customizable name bracelets without meeting a soul I knew. Sure, I saw Jenny the Bloggess and Kristen Chase (Motherhood Uncensored) but was too timid to interrupt their respective series of conversations with nothing but an awkward introduction, but that doesn't really count.

While waiting for the People's Party later that night, I recognized Miss Grace, who introduced me to Matthew from Child's Play x2 among others. Then once the party started I rejoined my wife, who'd spent an hour or two packing swag bags with Middle-Aged Woman, only to find out that she not only had met Jenny the Bloggess (and Nancy W. Kappes!), but she got a Bloggess sticker she was specifically forbidden to give me.** I figure since I was meeting Black Hockey Jesus at that time, it kind of evens out, cosmically.***

I somewhat redeemed myself later by saying hi to Momo Fali, Kristen, and Brittany (Barefoot Foodie), but overall I was so overwhelmed I missed far more opportunities than I seized, which was made especially tragic by Friday's aforementioned chaos. So much for getting my feet wet on Thursday and making the most out of Friday.

I convinced myself on Friday afternoon that despite some stomach pain, I felt okay enough to soldier through the evening as long as I didn't risk eating anything. I hadn't thrown up yet at that point and I figured I must be suffering no more than the effects of eating at IHOP at 2am the night before, instead of battling some kind of flesh-eating virus hell-bent on liquefying my insides, as my foe was later to be revealed.

My late arrival on the scene Friday is the root cause of numerous missed connections with awesome people like Maggie and Mike Adamick, and my lack of organization and outgoingness is the cause of my missing out on dozens more people I should have met somewhere, somehow in the crowds.

After being turned away from the MamaPop party by none other than Mrs. 4444 herself (just doing her duty as the lady with the checklist), I took that as a sign I should give up defiling the absolutely vacant bathrooms (but I bet the lines at the women's bathrooms were epic) of the Sheraton and call it a night at the relatively early hour of 10pm. That hour is for me, unfortunately for my overall health, much like 6:30 is for normal people.

Turns out, of course, we missed the best party of the conference, and a unicorn cake. A unicorn cake!

But the rest did me good (specifically the sporadic series of naps in a bath/shower and the patient nursing of my wife), as did the tentatively resumed ability to absorb small amounts of fluids for the first time in over 12 hours. Fluids make the hallucinations go away! Well, most fluids do, anyway.

So we showed up Saturday evening in time to meet longtime readers MamaNeena and Andrea (Sweet Life) and have a good talk (wishing we'd had more time to hang out that night and earlier in the weekend) before heading over to Quartino for dinner [picture] with Middle-Aged Woman, Vodka Mom, Sprite's Keeper, Stiletto Mom, DeeMarie, Shopgirl, Amo, and Jill-- we hadn't been here before but we definitely want to come back. J- because she wants more of what she ordered, and me because I'd like to go there when I can actually eat food.

We then headed to the bowling alley for BowlHer, which, due to the brain-squashing noise, was not good for meeting people you didn't already know. However, it was very good for getting stuff, since it was co-sponsored by several numerous companies. How can you go wrong with free cupcakes, wine, chocolate, and gift cards?

After deciding we'd had enough of the noise, we headed back to the Sheraton to check out the CheezeburgHer Party, which would have been 10x better if I was better able to eat by this point. We mostly just sat on a very comfortable couch in the presidential suite realizing how tired we were, but we were happy to get the chance to meet Elisa (Unlikely Housewife) after trying to coordinate a meetup all day. We then headed the 32 floors downstairs, where I met Backpacking Dad on my way to the bathroom.

I passed on sticking it out any longer in case tiredness made me relapse, and we reluctantly headed for home with about 30 pounds of swag (thanks largely to all those wine bottles people flying home had to give away). How strange we must have looked to non-blogging civilians on our ride home-- good thing we left the pink feather boa from BowlHer at the CheezeburgHer Party.

Still, with all the tote bags filled with food and pink or leopard print odds and ends, I might as well have been wearing my new blogging shirt and singing at the top of my lungs.

Anyway, if we met you there, we were glad to meet you, and if we didn't, we were sad we didn't. I don't think we'll make it out to New York next year, but that's not for lack of desire. Here's hoping against hope anyway that we'll see you all there!

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* Or maybe eggs, more likely, because I'm pretty sure people like that don't have to put up with inconveniences like sharp corners.

** And then she goes and taunts me by just leaving her leftover stickers in the bathroom for normal people to be confused by.

*** Except that I'm still pathetically devastated I never got to meet Jenny.

Dispatches from 2:30 in the morning

While trying to get back around to sorting out what I'd write for my obligatory BlogHer recap post, (after procrastinating by finishing off the hilarious and amazing How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely), I was treated to the following foreboding statement from my shockingly sophisticated 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter M-:

"Momma? Daddy? I burped accidentally and now Woof and my pillow and my sheets are all dirty."

Yes, we confirmed that means exactly what you think it means.

So whatever virus came in with the Thursday crowds at BlogHer has taken a third victim, as my wife J- has been recovering in relative splendor and comfort compared to my evening (and particularly my train ride home) on Friday.

Sorry to anyone to whom I may have spread this germ at the conference-- I only came back Saturday evening because I thought I'd had food poisoning (I even had a post all ready about it) and I felt okay enough to seize this wonderful opportunity once again.

Suddenly, I bet Jenny the Bloggess feels somewhat less disappointed about not getting to meet me. Though I'm sure when she met my unfairly lucky wife (who had wandered off with Middle-Aged Woman from Unmitigated) while rushing somewhere alongside THE Nancy W. Kappes, Paralegal, she was exposed to enough of the germs to satisfy my need for schadenfreude.

I mean, how dare she not seek out one of her legion of pathetic followers by holding up a handheld blue-tube filter over each man's face at the convention??

...Now that I think about it, that probably would have taken 10 minutes, tops. Hiding out as a man at BlogHer would be like hiding out as a transsexual on a Guess Who? board. Actually, that would be a perfect pro-level enhancement for Milton Bradley to add.

Anyway, I've had a fun night reminiscing about all the things we fed my daughter yesterday, and now that she's been back to sleep for awhile in what's left of her bed, I figure I should go lay down and cue the next round.

Please leave a message after the blerrrghhhh...

If you're reading this post, it's because I got back way too late from sheer, terrifying social overload at BlogHer parties, and you'll hear any funny stories from said wonderful time at some point in the far distant future (based on my track record for timeliness of reportage).

Disclaimer For Everyone At BlogHer, And Also Anyone Who Might Ever Meet Me In Person: I swear that as quiet and sweaty as I may have looked, I really, really was having fun. Really. That's just how I am. Sorry for any confusion or unnecessary awkwardness on your part.

To people reading this who don't know, or wish they didn't know, what I'm talking about, sorry again. I might have made myself a liar already.